Month: September 2018

Presidente, Proselyting, Pdays and Pig Fat

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment

On Sunday, during devotional, the CTM president told us the speakers at the devotional were the new CTM president and his wife!  We had no idea this would happen. Apparently President Martins-Silva´s wife has been quite sick for a while, so the general authorities decided to release him.  I don’t know much about the new president, but I love him and his wife´s speaking styles. They are Brazilian, but they spoke slowly about simple subjects and repeated themselves, so I understood most of their talks!

For proselyting on Saturday we stopped people on the street, introduced ourselves, talked about their beliefs, and asked for addresses so missionaries could give them a message about Christ or families. Unsurprising fact: stopping random people is not one of my innate skills. But it was fine. We found some people who were excited to learn more about the gospel.  I’m excited to go to Recife and teach people! But I suspect I will prefer knocking on doors. Doors are great — they never use headphones, don’t have to board buses, and they stay put instead of walking mach speed down the sidewalk.

Hannah and Sister Hale at Mr Cheneys--improved
Blurry yet beloved photo courtesy of Mr. Cheney’s (treat provider to the CTM) & Missionties.com

Anyway, I am great, but if you want to pray for me, pray that I don’t get lice (and that I learn Portuguese). A sister in my hall has lice and I really don’t want any. Unsurprising fact #2: the CTM is sickness central. All eight people in my district have been sick! I had a painful sore throat/cold my second week here which lasted 1 ½ weeks. I mostly recovered . . . then this week I got the same virus + eye inflammation. People keep asking if I’m crying because I´m sniffing and my eyes are red.  Mom, I feel a little misled; sleeping eight hours every night and constant handwashing ought to prevent this! I was healthier with less sleep at BYU! 😉

This week I wanted to tell you more about P-days.  They are great! It takes an hour+ to see everything in our boundaries, so I don’t feel too confined.  It’s mostly residential streets, but they’re residential streets IN BRAZIL!! So they’re exciting. There are huge, vibrantly-colored red, pink, orange, and yellow flowers blooming everywhere: the gardens, the parks, the trees. It’s super green (“verdant” describes Brazil perfectly). There are several types of palm trees and lots of flowering trees — but instead of cherry-tree-sized buds they have green leaves and lily-sized flowers that cover the sidewalks! I love it.

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capuacu fruit [stock photo]

On P-day I tried some Açai, which is sorbet-ish with ice cream consistency. I also tried a strongly-flavored melon-y sorbet-ish thing from a capuaçu fruit (google for pics). Delicious and exciting, because both tasted so unrecognizable that eating them is like what I imagine discovering a new color would be like.

We’ve also been to a bakery several times. My companion loves their banana bread. First I got a “cinnamon sugar” roll, (turned out to be savory fennel? seed roll) then a roll I thought had nuts (actually chunks of pig fat & skin! – not what I wanted!) and then finally correctly identified a coconut-shred-filled sticky roll, which was good. Hopefully knowing more Portuguese will improve my success rate in the future!

I love Brazil, Portuguese, and the CTM! I´ll be sad to leave in two weeks.

That´s the novel for this week,

Sister Faulconer

 

Halfway through the CTM experience

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment

Oi!

I’m halfway through the CTM experience!  I’m not sure how to feel; I’m excited to leave the [CTM] and teach people, but teaching people in Portuguese is still scary.  On Saturday we’re venturing out into the real world for real-life “street contacting” where we’ll share short messages about Christ (in Portuguese!) and get contact information.  The prospect of using 22 days of Portuguese study to stop random people on the street is fairly terrifying! But I learn more words every day, and the other missionaries who did it all survived, so I’m sure it will turn out fine.

My mom asked if I can tell I’m in Brazil inside the confines of the CTM.  I definitely can! We have a great view from our window of the city. The water taps are separate, the plugs are different, everything has signs in Portuguese, and the water fountains have buttons for “natural water” (room temp) and “cold water.”  The computer keyboards are very confusing. Typically, breakfast is fruit (papaya, melon, banana), ham & cheese paninis, baguette rolls (delicious but I miss whole wheat bread) and extremely sweet porridge made with sweetened condensed milk.Portuguese keyboard detail

[for illustration only–no photos from the CTM yet]

For lunch, we have beans, white and brown rice, various kinds of meat, grated vegetables (beets, zucchini, carrots, etc.), lettuce, and one or two other vegetables — often one I can’t recognize.  Dinner is similar. Sometimes we have something different like pasta, hot dogs, or soup. They have dessert which is usually some kind of jello or pudding. It’s usually quite sweet and not flavours I recognize.  The food is good, if not what I would choose to make myself. It’s not very flavorful, but they have good hot sauce. I think I use more hot sauce here than at home which is saying a lot! There are no labels so some foods are a surprise. Once I got something I thought was roasted carrots but turned out to be strangely-colored hot dogs!  I also had fun explaining to some Brazilians that US sweet potatoes are orange or purple, not greenish-white.

[Stock photos of the CTM cafeteria from LDS.org]

I felt the spirit a lot this week.  Some elders in my group got priesthood blessings, where an elder puts their hands on the person’s head and says whatever the holy spirit tells them to bless the person with.  I felt the spirit so strongly when they got blessings. I just felt so clearly that the blessings were from God. I’ve also memorized some great scriptures recently — Mark 9:23 about how everything is possible through faith, and Moroni 10:3-5 in the Book of Mormon, which says that if you pray about the Book of Mormon with a sincere heart and real intent, God will help you feel that it is true through the holy spirit.   They are both great!

Boa noite!

Sister Faulconer

Portuguese-o-phile

Sister Faulconer3 Comments

Oi familia,

We got called as the Sister Training Leaders today.  We are training two sisters, Sister Hale and Sister Faulconer. That’s right, we are in charge of . . . ourselves.  The other American sisters are going home or are in other branches. And no sisters are coming next week either, so who knows when we will have a real job!

I am learning a lot!  I achieved the goal for my first ten days –memorizing Joseph Smith’s account of the first vision, the missionary purpose (to invite others to come unto Christ, etc.) and a baptismal invitation, as well as 75-ish sentences and lots of vocabulary.  Memorizing in Portuguese is much harder than in English! I learn the words’ meanings first, but I don’t know the grammar so I have to memorize each word separately. For our next four weeks we’re supposed to memorize 20 scriptures, 2500 words, 500 phrases, and our entire grammar book. My instructor said the CTM wants 90 words/day and 18 memorized phrases.  Very little of the day is open for learning this stuff. We have some grammar lessons but mostly I`ll be learning this in the halls, at meals, in the 30-45 minutes of language study, the hour we have for getting ready for bed, and any time I get if something finishes early. It’s very intense!

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed about this two days ago and so then of course I also started to feel bad about all my other failings, why don’t I receive/understand more specific revelation from God, I could’ve been better pre-CTM, blah blah blah. I decided to pray about it right then while I was getting ready for bed in the bathroom.  Just as I was finishing my prayer, someone`s speaker (I think – I haven’t heard music there before) got louder . . . it was the chorus for “I Can Go the Distance” from Hercules. It was the Vocal Point cover I’ve loved ever since it posted on YouTube.

 The chorus says “I am on my way; I can go the distance . . . this is where I’m meant to be!” It’s all [about] how your goals are within reach, and it was the tender mercy I needed right then.  The great thing about tender mercies is how small they are. I didn’t desperately need help — I wasn’t very upset and would’ve gotten over it soon. But often God just sends us little reminders that he loves us. And sometimes it seems like he [doesn’t], and I can’t explain that. I guess that’s life on earth.

Anyway, our schedules are a little stressful but it’s a good way to see the gift of tongues in action.   My Portuguese is terrible but for 12 days of Portuguese experience it’s pretty terrific! On my 9th day of learning Portuguese I was talking to some Brazilian sisters in the gym about weather, post-mission plans, and pluses and minuses of the Brazilian, Canadian, and American government health care — I know, I´m crazy, but it came up in the conversation and one of the sisters was super knowledgeable about it.  You really do learn so much when you can talk to native speakers! I also taught four lessons over today and yesterday on the beginning of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the atonement and God’s plan for us — sans notes!

Anyway, that’s the novel for this week. Ciao ciao!

Becoming uma Brasileira

Sister FaulconerLeave a comment
Hannah at the CTM     Seeing all the missionaries at the airport was awesome.  We walked to the flights as a group so there was this wave of white shirt and tie elders (and me) walking around.  It really made me appreciate the size and strength of the missionary force all over the world so they can spread the gospel!  I remember going to the missionary preparation class in our Edgemont ward [congregation].  When I turned on the car to drive home to Orem, the first song on the hymns CD in our car would start playing. It was “Called to Serve,” and when the sun was shining and I was on a spiritual high from the preparation class I felt the missionary spirit so strongly.  Now I’ve experienced that feeling while seeing real missionaries in real life! The flight to Brazil felt so long, but I was counting my blessings after meeting the missionaries going to Johannesburg — they had a 16 hour flight plus all the other flying they had to do!
     I got the window seat for the Brazil flight.  The best moment of my travels by far was on the descent to São Paulo.  We had been passing over this really hilly brown country when I saw the ocean in front of us.  But it looked too white, so then I started to wonder if any of the São Paulo mountains were tall enough for snow!  It turned out to be a super thick layer of cloud.  We flew down into the cloud, and after a couple minutes the clouds suddenly cleared and São Paulo popped into view right below us.  It was gorgeous.
     It was especially great because it was so obviously different than anywhere I’ve ever been before.  Everything you can see is covered in a thick green carpet.  There are red tile roofs and silver metal roofs everywhere and the buildings are red, green, blue, pink, whatever.  It was even more fun driving through the streets.  The bus driver was very skilled at honking and maneuvering through tight turns.  We were in a narrow street when two huge gates popped open and I realized we were at the CTM!  We held up both lanes of traffic for 3-4 minutes while they guided us backwards into the parking lot.
When I got off, Sister Whitaker, my first grade teacher, was there to greet me.  She put my name tag on me!  That was exciting.  People recognize the elders, but sisters blend in, so it was exciting to get a tag that identifies me as a missionary for Christ.
     We reviewed the dedicatory prayer [for the CTM] given by President Nelson (then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles).  I realized that I have always thought of the US as the land prophesied of in that scripture about Joseph Smith and the land being discovered.  But that is so silly because it could just as easily refer to the Americas as a whole!  Yes, Joseph Smith was in the US but we don’t know where the Nephites and Lamanites actually lived, so there’s no reason Brazil can’t be the promised land too.
     A funny moment happened on our first day when we put our suitcases in the elevator.  There was this loud beeping sound that wouldn’t turn off and we were worried we were over the weight limit or that the elevator had broken!  The CTM brothers didn’t know either so eventually we took everything out again. Then one of the sisters realized the beeping noise had followed us out of the elevator. It was the metronome (for playing the piano) in her luggage!
     My companion is Sister Hale.  I met her in Atlanta.  She is great — an awesome first companion.  She speaks a lot of Spanish at home (she was born in Argentina!) so she understands a lot more Portuguese than I do.  There are very few sisters here compared to elders (way way less than the percentage of sisters for all missionaries –we’re the only two in the American group that got here last week so it’s like 1 to 18 or 20 or something) and most of them speak Portuguese or Spanish.  Most of the American sisters also know some or a lot of Spanish — I’ve met maybe two other sisters who don’t speak Spanish and there are hundreds of people here.
     Learning Portuguese is difficult, of course.  On the one hand, it is amazing that I can make any Brasilieros (Brazilians) understand sentences I say in Portuguese, however broken!  I have memorized the missionary purpose (Invite others to come unto Christ . . .) and the scriptures for the first vision and some other sentences and questions in Portuguese (Somos Missionarias da Igrega de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Ultimos Dias.  Temos uma mensagem sobre Jesus Cristo.  Voce acredita en Deus e en Jesus Cristo? etc. etc.)  On the other hand, it’s easy to feel like you aren’t learning enough Portuguese when you’re at the CTM.  We keep hearing about people who are learning 100 words a day, memorizing two scriptures etc. etc.!  One issue is that we have a lot of things to do that aren’t memorizing our assigned vocabulary and passages for memorization.  We eat meals, we go to choir, we have devotionals, we have planning, we prepare lessons for investigators, read scriptures — it’s a lot!  They gave us a goal for memorization and learning Portuguese for the first ten days so I’ll tell you how I did next week.  I taught my first two lessons about the gospel this week.  It’s quite hard in Portuguese!
Boa noite! (we’re three hours ahead)
Sister Faulconer